Editorial: Here's what the numbers guy says about our national debt

FILE - In this Feb. 12, 2014 snow plows clear a highway after a winter storm brought Atlanta to standstill. As spring officially begins Thursday, officials across much of the nation are still paying the bills for keeping roads clear during the cold, snowy winter. Atlanta is dipping into a rainy-day fund to cover $13.5 million in cleanup costs. (AP Photo/David Tulis, File)

Yes he is, says the director, shuffling his charts and graphs. He’s telling it like it is, um — technically speaking.

The deficit in 2009 was $1.4 trillion. For FY2014, the deficit is projected to drop all the way down to $514 billion.

So then, the national debt is melting away right before our very eyes, just as the Prez suggests — right?

Um, not exactly, says the CBO director.

Smaller deficits still grow the debt, the director explains. They just grow it at a slower rate.

So the monstrous, record-size debt is not actually being paid down, as the Main Man and some Democrats are saying?

Uh, that’s correct, says the director.

But at least it’s good news the debt is growing at a slowed-down rate, right?

Um, good news for right now, says the director.

You mean there’s a catch?

Well, says the director, yes, sort of. Annual deficits as a percentage of the national economy will drop back down to around the historic average in 2015 — and “then rise again,” significantly exceeding the historic average by around 2022 or 2024.

Say, who is this Elmendorf guy, anyway? One of those right-wing Looney Tunes? One of those flat-earther Republicans?

His bio says he’s a Princeton and Harvard man. A former economist at the brainy Brookings think tank. A top-level guy at the Treasury under President Clinton.

Maybe the White House had better put the gumshoes on him all the same. Meanwhile, let’s continue to grill him in hopes of getting some reassuring answers.

Since we’re talking numbers here so vast they’re incomprehensible, do they really matter?

Does it really matter that the debt is $17.4 trillion and counting — $54,839 per man, woman and child? That a stack of $1,000 bills would have to go 63 miles high just to reach just $1 trillion? That 1 trillion seconds would be 31,546 years? That a trillion is a million millions, ten to the 12th power? That a trillion is a lot, and 17.4 trillion is a lot more? That the annual interest on the debt ($415.6 billion, 2013) is closing in on the amount spent on the military ($682 billion)?

Does any of this really matter to anyone other than Tea Party hellions decked out in Revolutionary-era garb waving around “Don’t Tread On Me” flags?

The CBO numbers guy insists it does. He says the debt is going to have “serious negative consequences” where it affects people’s lives directly — siphoning off money for investment, economic growth and jobs.

Wizards of Oz never like to have a Toto yapping at them as they manipulate the magic levers behind the curtain.

And the CBO director surely is starting to seem like a yapping Toto to the current Wizard of Oz manipulating the magic levers behind the curtain.

Isn’t there something that can be done about that annoying pest yapping away outside the curtain? You can bet on this: The Wizard of Oz’s people are working on it.